Daily flights to Panama on Iberia launched on Sunday

As of this past Sunday, July 6, Iberia is offering daily direct flights from Madrid to Panama. This represents a 40% increase in aircraft capacity (600 additional seats), bringing the Spanish airline's total availability up to 2,000 people per week.

Iberia will arrive at Tocumen International Airport with its Airbus A330 planes, equipped with 36 business seats and 242 economy seats, for a total of 278 seats. The Spanish airline will also operate the A340 aircraft model, which has seating for 289 passengers, divided into 24 business and 265 economy seats.

The Iberia flight lands at Tocumen at 3:40 pm and takes off for its transatlantic journey at 5:10 pm.

These flights reached 83% occupancy levels. Among the passengers, 60% were bound for Panama and the rest would make connections to other parts of the continent.

Air connectivity is one of the main reasons for the increase in tourist arrivals. Currently, there are approximately 25 weekly flights to Panama from Europe on such airlines as KLM, Iberia, Air France, and soon TAP of Portugal.

The success in attracting new flight frequencies has increased the number of visitors to Panama to more than 2.2 million visitors in 2013.

Expenditures within the tourism sector last year hit $3.500 million, representing 11.9% of the country's economy.

ATP figures indicate that last year there were a total of 169,542 Europeans tourists, who are distinguished for spending more money and going on longer trips. This has brought the tourist's average length of stay to reach a record 9.3 days in 2013.

Gloria Clavel, manager of Iberia in Panama, declared that the daily flight is a goal the company attained after 43 years of continuous presence in Panama. "Iberia brings their best planes and their best technology, which is a great achievement."